Data analytics are proving to be a powerful tool for improving the results of government program, according to a new report released today, “From Data To Decisions: The Power of Analytics.”
The report, which examines how several federal agencies used data, is a joint effort between the Partnership for Public Service and the Public Sector Business Analytics & Optimization practice at the IBM Center for The Business of Government. Keep reading →
Employees in the private sector continued to be more satisfied with their jobs, the way their organizations work and their supervisors than their counterparts in the federal government, according to data released this week by the Partnership for Public Service. Keep reading →
Not long after Sheila Bair was appointed to chair the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2006, senior officials at the FDIC sat down in a series of meetings to discuss what to do about a disturbing statistic.
“We couldn’t figure out why our agency was 25th in the rankings” of employee satisfaction, recalled Ira Kitmacher, manager for culture change and senior adviser at FDIC. Keep reading →
How many job seekers say, “I want to work for an organization with a poor reputation?” Or, “I want to work at a place where employees don’t get any personal or professional satisfaction?”
Whether looking for a government job or a position in the private sector, the answer is the same. Not many! Keep reading →
The Partnership for Public Service today released the 2011 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings – an important tool for Congress, the Obama administration and agency leaders to measure employee job satisfaction and commitment, gauge federal agency progress and identify signs of trouble.
“When agencies are poorly managed and workers aren’t committed, the public suffers,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. Keep reading →
When applying to college, students and their parents traditionally have worried about grades, aptitude test scores and application essays. And then there’s the complex financial aid process that requires the submission of detailed tax information.
Supplying the tax data, in fact, has long proven to be a huge headache for many families, and in some cases it’s a major barrier. But thanks to Julie Rushin of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), millions of students and their families are now benefiting from a new user-friendly system that takes away that worry about the tax information. Keep reading →
When Neal Brown began his federal career as an intern with the National Institute of Mental Health nearly 40 years ago, life was very different for Americans with mental illness. Beyond carrying a significant social stigma, they often were removed from their communities and placed in institutions, with no say in their treatment and sometimes living under abusive conditions.
In those intervening years, Brown has become a leading federal advocate for shifting care and government resources from the large psychiatric institutions toward a less expensive community-based rehabilitative model. In the process, he has helped bring mental health consumers into policy development, program design and services implementation at the federal, state and local government levels. Keep reading →
When Dr. Matthew Friedman began his career working with veterans nearly 40 years ago, not a single person had been diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. In fact, the term had yet to be invented.
Today, as the executive director for the National Center for PTSD at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Friedman is widely known as a pioneer in the field of traumatic studies. His career has been devoted to identifying the causes of and treatments for PTSD and advocating for those whose psychological well-being has been harmed by stresses of war and other jarring experiences. Keep reading →
Oliver Fischer, a young Census Bureau demographer, landed two unusual assignments that contributed to U.S. policy aimed at bringing about a fair and peaceful vote for Southern Sudan to declare its independence from the northern part of the country.
Starting in 2006 and continuing through the early part of 2011, Fischer had two roles-that of a census expert helping to set the stage for an accurate vote count, and later as a member of the State Department’s Civilian Response Corps working in extremely dangerous parts of Southern Sudan to provide American diplomats with information in the run up to the referendum. Keep reading →
At the height of our nation’s economic crisis, 34-year-old Interior Department employee Mary Pletcher became the lead career executive for awarding and tracking $2.9 billion in economic stimulus funds used to preserve and restore iconic national treasures, provide vital infrastructure in impoverished Indian communities and create jobs.
Leading the largest single investment in public lands since the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal, Pletcher managed funds for some 4,000 projects ranging from major improvements to Ellis Island to the nation’s largest dam removal and natural habitat restoration project on the Elwha River in Washington State. Under her leadership, Interior met all of the requirements under the stimulus law on time, and with no significant instances of waste or fraud. Keep reading →